The sudden illness, then death of Polly Higgins (1968 – 2019) is a sad and monumental loss to all humanity. As a champion of the concept of ‘ecocide’, she was taking on the whole world. I believe she would have won. The affinity between her work and mine was captured in Earth Emotions in this
Tag: solastalgia
Solastalgia I define solastalgia as the pain or distress caused by the ongoing loss of solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory. It is the existential and ‘lived experience’ of negative environmental change, manifest as an attack on one’s sense of place. It is characteristically a
Climate science has been warning us about chronic, negative environmental changes for decades now. However, the scientists have been wrong on almost every front. Wrong in the sense that every prediction they have made has been shown to be mistaken. Climate reality, as it has unfolded, has been worse than their predictions. The science has
A positive feeling of oneness with the earth and its life forces where the boundaries between self and the rest of nature are obliterated and a deep sense of peace and connectedness pervades consciousness. (eu =good, tierra = earth, ia = suffix for member of a group of {positive psychoterratic} conditions). [Albrecht 2010] (Pronounced:
The Psychoterratic Typology (see Glossary) Negative Emotions Origin Positive Emotions Origin Biophobia Kellert & Wilson 1995 Biophilia Wilson 1984 Ecoagnosy Albrecht 2017 Ecoliteracy Orr 1991 Ecoamnesia Kahn 1999 Sumbiophilia Albrecht 2018 Ecoanxiety Leff 1990 Eutierria Albrecht 2010 Ecocide Galston 1970s Terraliben Albrecht 2018 Eco-Necrophilia Fromm 1965 Biophilia Fromm 1965 Ecoparalysis Rees 2007 Soliphilia Albrecht 2009 Ecophobia
Abstract The Anthropocene epoch is based on the evidence of dominance of human affairs over all natural processes at a planetary scale. It is also characterised by countless biocidal catastrophes worldwide with mass bee death by insecticides just one that has received world-wide attention. Those sensitive to the scope and scale of these insults
I have finally figured out why people actually want climate calescence (the great warming) to happen. There is an urge within many of us to want a form of Armageddon to purge all our failings and for everything to start all over again. Our lives have become so full of difficulty that incremental change for
I suggest that the ‘new mourning’ contains the emergent elements of detailed knowledge of causality, anthropogenic culpability and enhanced empathy for the non-human (Albrecht 2016-7). The etymological origins of the word ‘mourning’ come from the Greek language, mermeros related to ‘a state of being worried’ and its meaning is associated with being troubled and to
“The people I was concerned about were still ‘at home’, but felt a similar melancholia as that caused by nostalgia connected to the breakdown of the normal relationship between their psychic identity and their home. What these people lacked was solace or comfort derived from their present relationship to ‘home’. In addition, they felt a profound sense of isolation
